When The Student is Ready The Teacher Will Appear - in memory of Dr. David Stewart

When the Student is Ready, the Teacher will Appear

I received news yesterday of the passing of a dear friend.  The wave of emotions when someone you care for dies can really knock the stuffing out of you can’t it?

My friend, teacher and mentor was David Stewart PhD, he was born in 1937 and died on the 13 October 2020.   

The impact Dr Stewart had on my life was huge!   I was born into the Roman Catholic religion and went to Sunday School and church until I was 15 years old.   Then at 15, my sister, who was 22 wanted to marry the man she loved.  I remember going to the Catholic Club with my sister to talk to the priest, and I remember him telling her she couldn’t marry the man she loved because he wasn’t a Catholic.   When I was 15 (52 years ago!), 15-year-olds were still children compared to today!  The thing I remember the most about that meeting was not only that my sister was upset and distressed but I started asking question about religion! Who was this man (who I had only ever seen in Church) sitting at the bar drinking Whiskey telling my sister she couldn’t marry the man she loved?

To cut a very long story short, my sister did marry her beloved (after taking lessons to became a Catholic and having to commit that any children of the marriage would be brought up in the Catholic religion!).  

Other than for christenings, weddings and funerals, I stopped going to church in 1968.  That priest changed my view of the church.  The way he spoke to my sister, with no compassion or love – just orders – let me see a different side to him and I became aware of ‘the rules’. Of course, the way our brains work, we often choose to remember events differently as to how they were – sometimes our brains lessen the intensity of the emotions and sometimes it heightens them.

Anyway, back to David Stewart. In 2012, 44 years after the incident with my sister and the priest, I was about to take a class with Dr Stewart. I was in America to learn from him an anointing technique using essential oils called the Raindrop Technique, and part of the training was a two-hour Bible Oils class entitled The Healing Oils of the Bible.  I was a little apprehensive as I hadn’t opened a Bible for 44 years.  

The class was wonderful as well as fascinating – essential oils are named in the Bible over one thousand times. Frankincense and Myrrh, Cedarwood and Cypress, Sandalwood and Cassia and many more.   He was a wonderful storyteller and that’s when it happened!  Just as the priest in 1968 shut the door so abruptly on my world of faith and love, mercy and understanding, David Stewart opened it again!   I bought a Bible and highlighted all the parts that mentioned essential oils, The Holy Anointing Oil, the Sweet Incense, the cedarwood in the cleansing of the lepers.  I read David’s book The Healing Oils of the Bible from cover to cover and devoured every word – and I returned to church.

I believe that everything happens for a reason.  When I was ready to have that door re-opened, David came into my life – when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  Rest in Peace David Stewart – now happily reunited with your wife Lee – you have left a wonderful legacy and will be missed by so many.  

I am the administrator of a Facebook Group called